Rescuing Great Memories 2: Lisbon, March 2006…

I spent two and a half days in the Portuguese capital and it was a quite crazy experience. I took a bus at midnight from Seville and arrived in Lisbon at 5:30 am. I stayed inside the bus station for a while and when it was clear (around 7 am.) I began walking… and walking… and walking. Basically, I spent approx. 15 hours wandering around the city: Praça Marquês de Pombal, Praça do Rossio, Praça do Comércio, Castelo de São Jorge, Torre de Belém…

When I was walking around the Praça do Rossio, two men offered me marijuana. Later, when I arrived at the Praça do Comércio, a beautiful girl approached me and told me -in Portuguese- that we had spent a wild night of sex, drugs, and alcohol a year before; then, she added that I was a complete douchebag because I never called her back. I tried to deny everything -in Spanish- but she was quite convinced about what she was saying…

(She said we spent a wild night together but the truth is…)

I left the place while she was still yelling at me… Some hours later, I passed by the same praça and suddenly I saw a person pointing at me: “The Peruvian! The Peruvian! The Peruvian of the wild night with sex, drugs, and alcohol!”. The blond girl who had approached me hours ago was accompanied by some guys with videocameras. She was a famous actress participating in a hidden-camera TV show: the beautiful girl had played a joke on me and it was so hilarious that I was going to be featured on her show! Unfortunately, I have no recording of this epic episode…

Moreover, as I posted previously, Lisbon is my favorite poet’s homeland. It was a dream come true being in the city where Fernando Pessoa was born. I tried to visit the House Museum Fernando Pessoa but it was closed. Fortunately, I accidentally ended up passing by the café “A Brasileira” where one can find a bronze statue of the poet who “invented” his own famous heteronyms: Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Alvaro de Campos, and so on…

I hope you enjoy the photos of Lisbon I dusted off! If you haven’t been there ever, you should plan a trip to Portugal ASAP!…

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jesushidalgo

My passion for photography has led me to participate in short movies as a cinematographer and camera operator -but also indirectly as director, actor, and scriptwriter- with my friends at Duke University (did I forget to mention that I am currently doing a PhD in Spanish Literature?). In January 2014, I started working for The Chronicle, The Independent Daily at Duke University, and hopefully I’ll work as a photojournalist in the future.
My advisor once told me that I am a multi-task oriented independent soul… and I bet she was right!
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